"They've made us rethink quite a few things," he says. "As an organisation we have rules and processes, but we are now making risk-based decisions on the fly with a focus on outcomes."

Usually a civil emergency lasts two to three days, with a council's main priority being the operation of essential services.

"As IT, we would focus on that," he says. "But [with the earthquakes] our key challenge was over a sustained period of time. This meant we were having to provision IT services for Civil Defence, City infrastructure recovery and normal operations, as well as council facilities.

"The problem was the sheer volume we had to deal with."

Council buildings were among those badly damaged. Till says at times he was wearing a hard hat and a high-visibility jacket to get into buildings and remove PCs, so they could be provisioned elsewhere.